


crush

by Verbyna



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Character Study, Closeted Character, Kent 'alone at the top of the world' Parson, M/M, NHL Draft, Parson family, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 13:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5419583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Jack, even the weight of the hockey world’s combined expectations felt like something to brace against. Steadying. When he told Kelly that he’ll be fine, a month into his first regular season, she believed him. He doesn’t know why she cried, but she believed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	crush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [idrilka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilka/gifts).



> As always, thanks to the CP/hockey twitcrew for encouraging my angst habit. You guys are the best crew anyone could hope for. And happy (belated) birthday, Idril! This one's for you. ♥
> 
> Warning: this is from Kent's POV, so it's not very kind to Jack. The characters' views on mental health do not reflect mine.

Jack doesn’t call when Kent gets the C. He doesn’t call when Kent breaks three of his ribs and misses the first games of the regular season. He doesn’t call when Kent’s sister names her baby Alicia and the Zimmermanns both tweet their congratulations. He doesn’t call when Kent leaves him a drunk voicemail after a game on Christmas Eve, crying and cursing and begging Jack to pick up at 3am.

Jack calls the morning after Kent wins the Stanley Cup, makes it sound like he should’ve been the one nursing a post-win hangover instead, and hangs up before Kent can say anything.

Kent goes out and adopts a cat that afternoon, in between interviews. He names her Kit Purrson and takes pictures of her in the Cup on his day with it, and if he sometimes looks into her white-blue eyes and thinks _Jack_ , it’s not like her purring is any less therapeutic.

 

*

 

He’s always waiting for Jack to call him. He gives Jack a lot of reasons, all the excuses he could ever need to tap on Kent’s name and hold the phone against his ear and wait for Kent to pick up. That’s all it is, really; he wants Jack to wait for him, just for a couple of seconds.

He hates their conversations.

He made a life and a name out of setting them up.

 

*

 

When they were kids, Jack would spend hours on buses pressed up against Kent. He was a lot bigger than Kent back then, and he always pushed Kent halfway into the aisle, the backpack with his pills tucked safely under the window on his other side.

Kent wanted to go home all the way to the end - all the way to the draft. But Jack would press himself against him, bony elbows and warm hoodies that smelled like Alicia’s washing powder. And Kent, god help him, braced himself against the floor and pushed back. He kept Jack safe against the window on a hundred trips, kept Jack’s secrets and his spare tape. He couldn’t tell Jack that he wasn’t sure he belonged there. He couldn’t let him know he wasn’t as steady as Jack thought, both on his line and braced between Jack and the rest of the team.

He packed a backup bottle of Jack’s pills with him to Montreal. Jack found them.

After the draft, there was no going back. 

 

*

 

Jack asked,

_What if I’m not good enough?_

Kent wasn’t good enough at eighteen. He got better, with Jack’s shaky voice stuck in his head like a song off the radio. He was good enough to get the Calder, the C, the Art Ross (twice), and the Stanley Cup.

And if Jack can know how helpless Kent is to him and show no mercy, Kent can be ruthless, too. He can give as little as he wants to the media, shrug off compliments before they become something Jack can use as a hook under Kent’s skin; he can win, and win, and win, and fuck off back home to his cat and his 4am cardio routine.

He’s not in the NHL to make friends. He’s not that naive kid anymore.

 

*

 

Jack is better than any coach Kent has ever had. He can pinpoint every single one of Kent’s faults. He’s so sweet sometimes, too. So sad. He taught Kent how to play through the worst a brain can throw at someone.

He was the first boy Kent kissed, and he’ll be the last.

It’s a choice. Kent can’t have Jack anymore, but he can give this much to himself: what he had with Jack won’t be one of a string of closeted hookups. It meant something. It still does.

 

*

 

Mom and Kelly worry about him. It’s nothing new - he’s the baby of the family, and he spent his childhood running around the ice with knives strapped to his feet. He went and fell in love at sixteen with the only boy who could outskate him.

Kelly met her husband in the Zimmermanns’ backyard. Five minutes in, Jack leaned over and whispered, “Jules looks like he was struck by lightning.” Kent laughed. He laughed and laughed. He didn’t want to find out what his face would do otherwise. Alicia smiled over at them, and Kent thought, _I came from blowing your son when we were high last night._

(He had to break the news to her, about Jack and the pills, but that came later. A lot of things stopped being funny in hindsight.)

Right after the baby was born, Kelly told him that first loves are a shock to the system. If they work out or run their course, you’re immune to that sort of pain forever. If not - well. They don’t call it a crush for nothing.

After Jack, even the weight of the hockey world’s combined expectations felt like something to brace against. Steadying. When he told Kelly that he’ll be fine, a month into his first regular season, she believed him. He doesn’t know why she cried, but she believed him.

 

*

 

There are worse ways to learn what hunger tastes like than from being kissed by Jack Zimmermann in your billet family’s basement rec room.

Kent hasn’t fogiven himself for thinking it was something he could get over. He might have, if they’d stopped at that. He keeps telling himself that people don’t expect to fall in love with every person they kiss, that no one knows they’re kissing the person they’ll always want the first time they share spit, but. He knew. He just didn’t understand it would ruin him for everyone else.

Jack kissed him; Kent is a Stanley Cup champion. It’s all hunger, in the end. But god, he wishes he was older when he was infected. He wishes it was something he can talk about, a story for more than two people. Turns out the mysteries in legends are just the parts too dumb to mention. They wouldn’t compliment him if they knew he plays as well as he does because he wants the guy who broke his heart to twist the knife again.

(There was a basement, and a boy, and Kent wants that back - the way he was untouchable for twenty minutes because Bob Zimmermann’s son forgot to take his meds that morning.)

 

*

He was happy for thirty-four days. He likes to think Jack was happy, too. That he was just overwhelmed by the draft when he took too many pills, and there was nothing Kent could’ve done to prevent it.

Jack blames him, though. Why else would he be so bitter? And wasn’t Kent overwhelming that month, making plans to hook up whenever they played against each other and hang out in the offseason? He’d already bought them both passes to a golf course in New York. He’d even bought a truck and left it at Kelly’s place in Brooklyn, because he may hate driving, but Jack thought driving a truck would make them real adults. 

The truth is that the only plan Kent had, post-draft, was to narrowly lose the Calder to Jack.

Instead, he woke up one day and realized he could use Jack as a focal point to be a generational player. If he can’t compete with Jack, and he can’t let Jack go, it’s the next best thing. It almost feels like being close to him, in a fucked up way. Like Jack’s liney from Juniors winning means Jack has a legacy of his own beyond the overdose, and Kent’s doing right by him.

 

*

 

Jack in college is not so different from Jack in Juniors, other than the sobriety. He just has different people pulling him out of his own head, different goals to pursue like they’re a matter of life and death. By all accounts, he still goes out on 5am runs, still stays late at the rink. He’s still team captain.

Jack in college is also not Kent’s Jack. They were supposed to be in the NHL together. They were supposed to navigate fame together, have the same experiences. They were supposed to have their big moments at the same time.

Jack has finals. Jack has midterms. Jack has professors, and presentations, and the away crowd for his college team is nonexistent. Jack was made for bigger things, but whenever Kent manages to get him on the phone for something other than fighting, he seems so settled that Kent’s isolation looks pathetic in comparison.

They used to be alone together. Kent’s alone at the top now, and no one wants to hear about his rich-guy, living-the-dream problems.

 

*

 

Kent almost gets himself traded over how hard he pulls strings to clear cap space for Jack with the Aces. He thought that if he holds on hard enough, eventually things would work out.

Fucking _Providence._

It all comes pouring out, all the ways Jack used to rely on him, all the ways Jack lets people down, and it’s not even the half of it but it’s still too much, because Kent’s tired and ran on hope for years and Jack doesn’t even want him. Jack doesn’t even want to be in his _division_ , let alone on his team, and Kent put his career on the line for him, the career he built out of disappointment and doubt and everything Jack left behind, and it’s just--

He’s better than Jack, now. He didn’t take the scenic route. If he’s stuck loving and hating Jack, if that’s something he has to work around and carry around and hide and put a soundbite to, he’s going to beat Jack any way he can. If it’s rivalry Jack wants, that’s exactly what he’ll get.

(He’d still kiss Jack back. He’d walk away first this time.)


End file.
